Category Archives: Human Rights Commission

Last week, George Carlin was obituarized as a brilliant comedian, a scathing social critic and a fearless enemy of government censorship. All true. But it turns out the legendary funny man can also teach us a thing or two about human rights.

A few years back, Carlin was doing a stand-up bit about the austere-sounding names assumed by popes (“Somehow, ‘Pope Corky the First’ doesn’t command a lot of authority”) when a heckler got under his skin. The comedian, pausing from his Godly shtick, smote the loudmouth thusly:

“Would somebody just put a d–k in that guy’s mouth, please? That’s what he wants! He’s a c–ksucker in disguise! He’s got his mouth open because he wants someone to cum in it!”

And then it got worse:

“If you keep it up, we’ll grab your ass and throw you on the f—ing street where you belong with your mother. And I’m f—ing her in the a–hole every night anyway. So f–k you and your sister and your wife. If you got a kid, I hope your f—ing kid dies in a car fire. How do you like that you stupid c–ksucker?”

Bald-faced bigotry. Gratuitous obscenity. Wishing the death of a child. Forget the seven dirty words: We’re talking here about three of the most powerful taboos known to Western society.

Which is precisely why the crowd loved it. Carlin got an ovation. And one can safely assume the “c–ksucker” kept his mouth shut the rest of the night.

Among good comedians, heckler-bashing is an art form — one whose brush strokes are rendered with the filthiest, most juvenile words imaginable. The goal is not just to shut the guy up. It’s to humiliate him as a warning to others — to reclaim control of the room by pile-driving the guy into his seat.

It’s not the sort of experience you forget. Back when I was at CEGEP in Montreal more than 20 years ago, one of my broomball buddies got on the case of a comedian at a downtown night club. After a while, the exasperated performer waded into the audience, stuck the butt end of his micstand into my friend’s face, and started making furious beeping noises. “My s–thead detector ? it’s going off the charts!” he exclaimed.

The comedian just stood there, beeping and beeping and beeping away — for what seemed like a full minute — while my friend literally collapsed into his own ashen-faced mortification. The crowd went nuts.

Since that day, I have never even thought about opening my mouth at a comedy club.

It’s a cruel, Hobbesian disciplinary protocol. But it’s also essential to good comedy. If every two-bit office ham with three mojitos in him felt at liberty to pipe up, comedy shows would all transform into open-mic night, and stand-up itself would become a dead letter.

Which is why the aforementioned Mr. Carlin must be rolling around in his grave right now. Thanks to a decision rendered last week by a B. C. Human Rights Tribunal, comedians performing in Canada may soon be responding to hecklers by asking them earnestly to “please refrain from further spurious commentary.”

The case in question dates from May 22, 2007, when a certain Guy Earle was performing comedy at Zesty’s Restaurant in Vancouver. Late into his act, a group of women — who, by the manager’s account, had been drinking on the outside patio for the previous seven hours — took seats next to the stage and started heckling. (Earle himself has offered a more precise description: “Two of them started making out, flipping me the bird and saying I hated lesbians.”)